Earlier this week I was in a Facebook debate (fight) regarding gun control. It started like this.

A local woman posted on our neighborhood’s Facebook page that she had seen a man with a gun in his waistband head into our grocery store. She then said had she been inside shopping and seen that, she would have abandoned her cart and high-tailed it right out of the store.

You would not believe the shit storm this created.

Within minutes she had over 50 responses, ALL pro-gun, ALL pro-open carry, and many that were rude and condescending to her. Things like “move back up north,” and “grow a pair.” The negative responses were literally coming in every few seconds. So she deleted the post.

But she had already picked the scab. In light of all the mass shootings, most recently the one in Oregon, gun owners are feeling very protective about their right to bear arms. With the general public demanding stricter gun laws, they are beginning to quake in their boots a wee bit.

Before you know it, pro-gun meme’s were being posted on our community Facebook page, and I really tried not to get involved. I really tried. But one guy said in response to a plea for gun control, “welcome to the pussification of America.”

And there I was typing away.

How can anyone think of this country as “pussyfied” when we own more guns per person than any other country in the world. Unless I’m not reading the graph correctly, if Americans own 112 guns per 100 people, there must be families with a freakin’ arsenal of guns. So I called us a Rambo nation, and really pissed off one local woman.

This woman, very proud of being a gun owner, was highly insulted that I referred to gun owners as Rambos…which I did not. No matter how I tried to explain that I was talking about America as a whole seeming very Rambo-ish vs. Pussyfied, she kept firing back at me…pardon the pun.

The she proudly posted that they had just bought their ten-year old daughter a AR 15-22, which I’ll admit I had to look up, as I know zip about guns. Does this look like a gun for a 10 year old girl?

For the next 48 hours she posted a photo of her daughter shooting this rifle (in pink!) at least 3 times in different gun-related post. And I have to say, it really disturbed me. I don’t care how responsible you are, or how much gun safety you teach. The only time I think it’s reasonable for a 10 year old to be owning and operating a gun is if your dad is Rick Grimes and there are throngs of zombies chasing you.

But I never brought this up to her…I think she might have hunted me down if I had. This woman was so one-sided, so narrow-minded – she thinks gun control equates to one thing…taking all her guns away. She will not even consider the idea that maybe nobody needs to own 13 guns, as did the shooter in Oregon.

Won’t one or two do the trick?

I obviously don’t own a gun. I shot one once, in upstate New York. I missed the target, shooting the dirt 15 feet infront of me instead. My husband talked of buying a gun in the past, but I told him no way.

I’m not against guns. I just don’t get the attraction to them, much like how I don’t understand how anyone could eat shellfish. And it may be because people I see who do love guns seem a wee bit crazy to me – at least the ones around here do. How could you love something so much that you are blind to the fact that there is a serious problem with that very thing you love?

It’s sort of like being an alcoholic. You will do and say anything to justify you having that drink. Just like a lot of these pro-gun folks in my neck of the woods refuse to admit that there is a real problem in this country. Gun owners have had their way in the past and look what is happening. Gun control may not solve the problem at all, but jeez, can’t we at least try to see if it helps?

I got into a similar debate on a friends Facebook post who had the same opinion as me, but his friends didn’t not share his or my opinion. Guns seem to be a hobby for American’s. Namely us southern people who have a lot of land to unload some bullets into a target. I live in NC, and there’s a gun shop on every corner. I’m completely pro-gun. And my reasoning behind this is pretty simple:

If you restrict guns to a certain degree, to those law abiding citizens, what you have left is a community of unlawful citizens that will find very easy ways to obtain whatever firearm they can get their hands on, via black market or wherever else. Even now, it’s just as easy to get a gun with a filed off serial number, as it is to get crack, cocaine, heroine, or any other hard street drug out there. Making stricter gun laws will not take away the crazy people getting guns. It will make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to obtain a firearm. For every story I read on the internet about shootings and killings, I can counter with a story of how a gun saved a single mothers life when a man breaks into her house and her nine month old is sleeping in the bedroom. Or an old lady that had her door kicked in and she greeted him at her bedroom door with a shot gun and blew his ass halfway across the living room. What would have happened to those women if they were denied the right to buy a gun? “But I’m not talking about taking guns away completely, just making it harder to get one.” Right, but when you ask for one thing, it usually goes in extremes. If you make it difficult, it becomes impossible, and then the psycho’s are left with the guns, not the protectors of their family.

My daughter is 11 and she has been shooting guns since she was 5, with her father. The reasoning? She needs to know that these things are dangerous. I don’t want her to be curious about guns, pick one up somewhere (be it a friends house or wherever), and shoot herself on accident. She knows what they can do, she knows how dangerous they are, and she knows what they are used for. Her dad keeps hers locked up (and it looks like a smaller version of that picture you put up above that the other little girl has), and they only take it out to target practice every few months. But, this doesn’t bother me in the least, and I’d argue down anyone who tried to throw the cons of a child shooting a gun for informative and protection purposes.

I guess a lot of this boils down to where you were raised. I grew up right outside NYC where it seemed as if the only folks who had guns were cops and criminals. With no open space and no need to hunt, why would I want one?

But I try to stay open minded about the topic…have zero gun experience and will most likely stay that way. It’s just not in my DNA to want a gun so I guess I don’t know what all the hubbub is about.

I don’t know what the answer is. No matter what is suggested, it seems as someone’s rights are being stepped on. But something really does need to change.

Here’s the simple truth about all of the gun-grabbers’ voiced desires – they haven’t, don’t, and will never work. No plan publicly put forth by the Leftists will reduce the use of firearms in some form of criminal activity. The ONLY thing that would work – and what they’re all softly leading up to – is the total confiscation of Americans’ arms…like Britain did some decades ago.

That’s the basis for why Americans are against the gun-grabbers. Everything they want is useless and needless restriction upon we, the People.

Face it, if we were the “Rambo Nation” you describe and we were as crazy as you think we are, you’d already have been exterminated by one of us.

I only used the term Rambo nation because we clearly have a ridiculous amount of guns compared to every other place on the planet. Why does everyone get so bent at that term?

I take serious offense to your referral that gun owners are “Americans” and the rest of us are “gun grabbers.” Jeez…how narrow minded! It’s like you’re trying to say that only people who are “smart” enough to owns guns can consider themeselves American or “We the People”.

I don’t give a flying fig if you own a gun, and I have less interest in trying to take it away. I just know that what rules we have in place now don’t work, or there wouldn’t be a mass shooting every 3 weeks.

But it is clear that as a sane and rational gun owning citizen, you are not willing to even try anything that might save innocent lives from a fucking wacko with a gun. So I guess our conversation is over. Go drink your tea.